Amona protesters smash windows of bus taking them from outpost, flee
Other demonstrators blocked the road as bus with activists removed from Amona synagogue was heading to nearby settlement
A number of protesters transported by bus from the illegal outpost of Amona to the nearby settlement of Ofra on Thursday escaped the vehicle, smashing its windows and making a run for it. They were chased and some were apprehended by police officers, Channel 2 reported.
The protesters in Ofra also surrounded a police car in which at least one other demonstrator was being held, with some kicking the vehicle. One person hurled an object into the back window, shattering it.
Police said those who broke the bus windows had not been not under arrest but were being taken away from the area. Video clips and photos from the scene showed the front and back windows of the bus broken.
Channel 10 aired footage from inside the bus where police were loading the protesters, most of them forcibly evicted by officers from the synagogue in Amona on Thursday afternoon. The footage shows a police officer pushing them on the seats, with protesters shouting at the driver to open the doors, asking him how much he had gotten paid “for this crime.”
Other footage showed the protesters climbing out of the bus from a broken side window, and trying to wrench the front door of the bus open, smashing its glass.
The bus had stopped outside Ofra, because additional demonstrators, some of them people who were removed from the outpost the day before, blocked the road.
The protesters from inside the synagogue — at least 60 youths making a final stand hours after the last home in the outpost had been evacuated — left behind a scene of devastation in the place of worship, including swastikas and other graffiti targeting Israeli police on the walls.
As security forces breached the barriers that had been erected to keep them out, the protesters set off fire extinguishers and threw rocks, bottles and other objects at the security forces, before being dragged out. Some 57 people, mostly security personnel, were injured in clashes during the two-day court-ordered evacuation.
A spokesperson for the outpost initially said that none of the people inside the synagogue were from Amona. However, he later acknowledged that a number of Amona residents, including the outpost’s rabbi, Yair Frank, and community leader Avichai Boaran, were inside the synagogue at the time of the clashes.
He said that they were only there “with the intention of convincing [the protesters] to leave without violence.”
Police released a statement Thursday afternoon praising its forces for bringing the operation to evacuate the outpost, as mandated by a court order in 2014, to an end.
Police said all 40 homes in the outpost had been cleared of residents and that forces removed some 1,000 protesters who had showed up at the hilltop enclave to express solidarity with those being evicted.
Thirteen people were arrested, police said, for public disturbances and for violence against police officers during the operation.
Israel Police Chief Roni Alsheich said forces had prepared for a “quiet and dignified eviction” in order to “avoid harm to residents and security forces.”
“Police were trained to act with sensitivity and patience and maximum restraint… out of consideration for the pain [the eviction] caused to residents and out of understanding that this was an emotional and complex operation,” he said.
“In the face of all violent incidents, police will act to bring to justice all the rioters,” the police chief said.
The Times of Israel Community.